Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday! This is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where a new top ten list hits the web every week!

This week our topic is …

TEN BOOK I STRUGGLED TO FINISH OR DNF’D

Like all readers, there are times when a book just doesn’t catch my interest. It might be the story wasn’t for me, or, perhaps, it did not match my current mood.

Well, this list is about those books. A few of the recent novels I struggled to finish . . . or did not finish at all. Since I’m an obsessive completitionist, I try really hard to finish everything I start, but even I fail from time to time.

By picking the books on here, does that mean I’m saying they are not worth giving a try?

Nope. I am merely saying I had a hard time finishing or could not finish them. That doesn’t mean others won’t love them. Hell, I might try them another time and enjoy the hell out of them. But right now, they are just not for me.

Well, I did finish this one, but it was a long, hard road, one which I thought many times was insurmountable due to the depth of my deep boredom with the story. I’m sure others will really dig this social commentary posing as an epic fantasy, but I am not one of those people.

Comedic fantasy. Funny fantasy. Call it whatever you’d like, I usually don’t like it. And this book wasn’t the exception to the rule. The Palace Job failing to hold my attention at all, as I jettisoned it after a hundred pages or so in favor of something a bit more exciting and less funny.

I’m always on the lookout for my next dark epic fantasy. You know, one of those series where the author throws you into a complex world with loads of shit taking place, and you either have to sink or swim. And this seemed like a good book to satisfy my appetite for that. It wasn’t though. I gave up after reading two hundred pages.

The description of this one peaked my interest. (I’m a sucker for invasions and talented teenager caught up in the turmoil.) And I tried and tried to get caught up in this story. I can’t count how many times I set this book aside only to force myself to come back to it and try again. Finally I had to accept it wasn’t going to work.

Cool cover. A unique world. And the usual blah blah blah story publishers seem to die to give to readers these days. You know, the YA romance all grown up to strut its stuff as an epic fantasy. At least that was all I got out of this one before it landed on the virtual scrap pile.

This tale of a gifted orphan training at a sorcery school who seems to enchant everyone he comes into contact with left me cold. Plus I found the magic system to be a bit boring. Now, I’m not saying this was a bad book, poorly written, or anything like that; rather, it just wasn’t a story I was terribly interested in. Others might be.

A coming of age grimdark fantasy filled with twisted prophecies, cold-blooded murders, power struggles and quite a few twists and turns. At least, that is what I was introduced to in the first two hundred fifty pages of this weighty tome. And it wasn’t a bad book. But it wasn’t what I was looking for either.

This opening installment of Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt series was a book I desperately wanted to love. It looked like it was tailor made for me with its style, subject matter, and tone. Once I got into the story itself though, I could not get excited about it. I’m still upset with myself for not loving it.

So many people recommended this book/series to me. They made it sound like the thinking man’s epic fantasy. And I picked it up on two occasions, determined to dig into this narrative and uncover what so many people loved about it. On both occasions I failed miserably, stopping before I got halfway through the book. At this point, I’m calling bullshit and moving on.

After braving the waves of negativity about this series and actually enjoying the first book (The Author’s Definitive Edition, that is.), I was excited to move on to book two. Unfortunately, I could not get into this narrative. New characters. New goals. Several changes to our original characters personalities and motives. It all confused me, causing me to put this novel to the side. Eventually, I gave up. I will try again though, because I did enjoy the first book.

I know. I know. Such a huge waste. But this is a series I’ll probably try again, because you (among others) have recommended it by your great reviews. Hopefully, my failure to connect was merely a matter of wrong book at the wrong time. 🙂